Thoughts from a life well wasted

Day: January 30, 2019

I’m not sure if I’ve written about this before, but before I started this blog, I had a plan to have one hundred posts ready to go before I started. I made a list of everything I wanted to cover, all of the movies, TV shows, comics and games that I wanted to write about. At least, the list of things I wanted to cover in early 2010. I didn’t complete that list, because I realized that if I tried to stick to my hundred articles I would never start posting. So I put the list away and just wrote about what interested me whenever I had the time. Recently, I found my list of proposed articles. It was kind of surprising, seeing what I thought I wanted to write about a decade ago and can’t understand why. (I guess I thought I had something to say about Chuck and According to Jim? I’m not sure what my intended angle was) It also is filled with things I truly wanted to write about and have never gotten around to do so. So I am going to make an effort to cover the remaining items on the list, even the odd ones if I can find something to say about them. (I feel like I’ve written this post before, but I’m not sure I posted it.)

I am starting with one of the games on my list, the only one that really hasn’t stood the the test of time: Zack & Wiki: The Quest for Barbaros Treasure. I know why this game was on my list. Even in 2010 this game was already sinking into obscurity. That felt wrong to me; I was annoyed that this charming, solid adventure was being washed away as another piece of Wii shovelware. I fired it up just after Christmas and even a more than a decade later, it remains charming. There are some flaws, but for the most part Zack & Wiki remains an enjoyable way to spend six to eight hours.

Zack & Wiki is essentially a point and click adventure game. Using the wii remote as a pointer, the player moves Zack around the stages and solves puzzles. Zack himself is little more than a blank avatar, but Wiki, his flying metallic monkey friend, has several skills. By shaking the wii-remote Zack shakes Wiki like a bell. This draws attention from big enemies. It also turns most enemies into items that can be used around the map. Frogs turn into bombs, pirate goons turn into blocks that can be moved around, snakes can be turned into a grapper to get hard to reach items. Most of the puzzles are built around that ability. There are some keys and levers and the like, but mostly it comes down to finding enemies, turning them into items and using them where appropriate. The hardest part of the game is that you have to do things in the proper order, frequently without being able to tell what the proper order is before you do things.

That is where the big flaw with this game comes in. This is a game the requires experimentation, but the scoring system punishes experimentation. You can also get stuck, where the only option is to give up and start over, even if you only need to move back one step or two. Or if you are at the end of an hour long stage. It would take a very small change to make for a significantly smoother experience.

Graphically, it seems to take a lot of its inspiration from Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. It has that same sort of cel-shaded cartoon look. The games look remarkable similar, which is far from a bad thing, though it is worth noting that this game probably looks slightly worse than Wind Waker and came out nearly a half a decade after that game. The look of the game is a draw, even though it creates some confusion. It looks like a kids cartoon, and the largely charming antics of the Calvin & Hobbes-esque titular duo reinforce that kiddy appeal. But the game is a fairly difficult puzzler. This is not a game that kids will likely have a lot of success.

Still, the cast is undeniably charming. Zack with his oversized pirate hat and generally troublemaking ways. The rest of the crew of the Sea Rabbits, who are more than a little reminiscent of Tetra’s crew from Wind Waker, are largely amusing. Then there are the villains, from the Rose Rock pirates, a group of incompetent goons and their mean anime girl leader Captain Rose. Each area of the game has some obstacles, from a group of furry goblins to the cutest possible baby dragon. The look of the game is simply charming. There is a story, but there isn’t a lot there.

In a lot of ways, Zack & Wiki is about the perfect Wii game. It is a game that would be easy to move off the system, but since much of the puzzle solving is done with motion controls a lot of the appeal would be left behind. It feels like it should have been the start of long running series, but sales prevented that. I am glad I found the excuse to play it again.